Longview, Tyler, Corpus Christie and Brownsville, TX. Longview could be the Atlanta of Texas. Tyler has a similar setting to Longview, but its sprawl would butt into the eastern sprawl of DFW, making an even larger metro. Corpus and Brownsville have always had great locations. Brownsville, especially being a border city and having such a physically large canal

Scranton, Pennsylvania! For some reason I was slightly enchanted by Scranton when I visited. The city felt a little run down. I would love to see that place flourish. Syracuse, too. I like the old feeling of the city.

Toledo, Ohio needs to be revitalized and grow into a major center. It has the existing infrastructure and it is conveniently situated between Chicago and Cleveland. Toledo has the potential to regrow its central city and its surrounding metro region to rival Detroit, Cleveland and Columbus. Now if only its business and civic leaders would strive for this scenario.

Coming from Central/West Pa, I would like to see Altoona, Hollidaysburg, and State College grow. I've seen great potential in the area and has great scenery, also has a ton of history with the railroads. It's also not far from Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and Philly. Probably one of the things I'm proud of most is being the home of SHEETZ! Down below are some pictures I've sourced that show Altoona and Hollidaysburg.

A lot of the Erie Canal towns would be cooler if they had more people. They often have very interesting old centers created from the canal wealth, but without the canal there's not so much. Places like Syracuse, NY, for example.

I've toured through the entire region in the past few years...I can't put my finger on it, but Western Ny/Erie Canal region has it's own thing going on...It's own vibe!..It's depressed for sure, but at the same token it has some real old money and amazing art decco architecture...Cheers to cities like Buffalo making a comeback!

Toledo, Ohio needs to be revitalized and grow into a major center. It has the existing infrastructure and it is conveniently situated between Chicago and Cleveland. Toledo has the potential to regrow its central city and its surrounding metro region to rival Detroit, Cleveland and Columbus. Now if only its business and civic leaders would strive for this scenario.

Both Toledo and Erie need to start pulling their weight.

Within Michigan, Grand Rapids is quickly growing into a major economic center of 2+ million people. The central metro area has roughly 750,000, but there is a huge ring if midsize and small cities that are becoming increasingly tied to the city. Muskegon (170,000+), Holland (100,000+), and even Kalamazoo (250,000+) are within the sphere of influence. Eventually I could see Grand Rapids become a sort of Atlanta, with a relatively small (but built up core) surrounded by thousands of miles of endless sprawl. It could easily grow into a metro of 3-4 million people over the next fifty years.

This is an excellent thread. As others have posted, many cities have the existing infrastructure to support much larger population bases. I believe we'll see nearly all prior larger cities that have downsized these past decades grow & prosper for yrs. to come. It would be nice to see many of these 75,000-150,000 size cities strengthen their economic position & stature within their respective states. My prediction would be that the greatest resurgence & growth will be in the midwest, plains and eastern rocky mountain region of the country. Cities like Sioux Falls, Fargo, Bismarck, Billings, Cedar Rapids/Iowa City, Green Bay, Rochester, Duluth/Superior & Columbia. I would include an Illinois city or 2, but the politics in that state may prevent development in the smaller mid-size cities of Peoria & Rockford. With capital investment back in the core cities, it would certainly curtail urban sprawl, which is quite expensive on city/county/state budgets.

Providence, Rhode Island, is essentially a Baby Boston and probably my favorite small city that I have been to. It's also just an hour south of Boston, and about 3 hours from New York City. Good setting, great bones, convenient location, and has had a nice revitalization over the last 15 years. I would like to see some new construction here. It deserves a better skyline to match the city itself.

As a salt laker I'm happy to see my city plugged here a lot. But I'm skeptical - the Wasatch Front is expected to grow to a population of 4.5 mil by 2060 IIRC. That scares me. I want to see the american west preserved in its natural beauty, and maybe with some super aggressive initiatives we could keep SLC on its current footprint. But the biggest issue is water - we are expected to plunge in to a mega drought. In a wealthy society like ours water should not be a scarce commodity. There are loads of entitled people here - usually the product of conservative thinking - that feel the dirty scum below them don't deserve water but they do because they are white and straight and old. Ooh, and RioTintoKennecott! If you ignore the fact that they are stealing our water, polluting our land, and responsible for 10 percent of our air quality emissions, they are a great company leading our New Urbanist movement (which lots of entitled pricks have told me is, I kid you not, a socialist plot by Obama to make our communities gay.) but they are responsible for so much loss of water and clean air here. We have this issue of natural resources here in the west that is a foreign concept to people from the east. So while I'm excited for the growth to come, I think some work needs to be done to kick out old crabs in our legislature who block everything and see our resources as something that can't go away and don't give a a shit because they are going to die in 20 years, and to bring in people who are about the future, not about their pockets. Because we will literally cripple our economy if we dont take the right steps.

re: post #20. i have noticed a markedly increased exposure of the canadian cities, their housing markets, urban emphasis, exposure of itself as a great vacation destination, etc. to me, it certainly has so much of what i like, as far as both exposure to rural life, if you wish, urban life, trade, technology, fairly easy to identify w/ their culture, likes and dislikes, music, education, etc. it is a large land mass w/ relatively few inhabitants; yet, off the cuff, much of the canadian population is in the large urban centers, which seem to be very much sophisticated. i have only been to toronto, as i accompanied my parents on a business trip when i was six. however, my most memorable experience on that trip was the marriage of my cousin in the cathedral of notre dame. i also remember some of the architecture, thinking and discussing w/ my parents and other family members how i was having difficulty distinguishing foreigners from americans---bringing about a rather loud chuckle from all, excepting me! i've noticed several companies from canada relocating their headquarters and all operations to memphis, and i understand their are to be others. i don't keep up w/ canadian politics, but i have friends in montreal, toronto, regina, and vancouver. my friends from regina paint a fairly blank picture of that particular area, and out of 7 children, 4 have left to attend university in tn. vancouver seems to continue to grow, the olympics have boosted various areas, areas such as vancouver. i would like to see toronto and detroit establish more local interdependance, and the potential for the cities near the canadian pipeline will no doubt cause stable growth for employment, establishment of educational institutions and families. just as the alaska pipeline provided many spinoff businesses, in order to provide needed materials for the line, people come to where the employment. too, i can very well see, if a government (politicans and their particular brand of self-serving policies and politics), a move of certain classes in america picking up individually using whatever skills they have and using them in a new life in canada. one more reason to get rid of that moron now in the white house, and the minions that protect him, as they shadow him and just how incompetent he really is, in his current position.

^ Yes there are some Canadian cities that are incredibly urban for their size.

It's all about relativity I suppose..A metro of 400,000 is considered a strong medium sized metro, and is a regional hub. In the U.S, it would be a college town maybe...Syracuse NY would be considered a major metro up here much in the vein of Winnipeg or Hamilton.

re: post #20. i have noticed a markedly increased exposure of the canadian cities, their housing markets, urban emphasis, exposure of itself as a great vacation destination, etc. to me, it certainly has so much of what i like, as far as both exposure to rural life, if you wish, urban life, trade, technology, fairly easy to identify w/ their culture, likes and dislikes, music, education, etc. it is a large land mass w/ relatively few inhabitants; yet, off the cuff, much of the canadian population is in the large urban centers, which seem to be very much sophisticated. i have only been to toronto, as i accompanied my parents on a business trip when i was six. however, my most memorable experience on that trip was the marriage of my cousin in the cathedral of notre dame. i also remember some of the architecture, thinking and discussing w/ my parents and other family members how i was having difficulty distinguishing foreigners from americans---bringing about a rather loud chuckle from all, excepting me! i've noticed several companies from canada relocating their headquarters and all operations to memphis, and i understand their are to be others. i don't keep up w/ canadian politics, but i have friends in montreal, toronto, regina, and vancouver. my friends from regina paint a fairly blank picture of that particular area, and out of 7 children, 4 have left to attend university in tn. vancouver seems to continue to grow, the olympics have boosted various areas, areas such as vancouver. i would like to see toronto and detroit establish more local interdependance, and the potential for the cities near the canadian pipeline will no doubt cause stable growth for employment, establishment of educational institutions and families. just as the alaska pipeline provided many spinoff businesses, in order to provide needed materials for the line, people come to where the employment. too, i can very well see, if a government (politicans and their particular brand of self-serving policies and politics), a move of certain classes in america picking up individually using whatever skills they have and using them in a new life in canada. one more reason to get rid of that moron now in the white house, and the minions that protect him, as they shadow him and just how incompetent he really is, in his current position.

memphis proper is at around 709,000. metro memphis has always experienced medium growth, until approximately the last year and a half. shelby county is now the only tn county to surpass the 1 million mark, and it has a significantly fast growing downtown and midtown, not to speak of east memphis, the east suburbs, and certainly the south metro, which contains one of the top 25 fastest growing counties in the u.s., as well as the fastest growing suburb in the u.s. another top 100 fastest growing county is located east of memphis, in fayette county, #74 2 years ago. memphis' contigious growth area alone has an estimated 1.18 million over two years ago. that is an area of about 32 miles. the number leaves all of w. memphis and marion, which are directly across the river, all of tipton county, even though atoka and munford are currently building a massive housing development, which will connect millington. the new interstate and the 2nd outer beltway are already producing huge changes in business growth, private community developments, and feeder roads. much is going on, and new industry and manfacturing, biotechnology companies, etc. are steadily building throughout the city and metro. current shelby county pop projections, as of july 1. '12. 1,034,633. the b M is doing well.

Would def like to see some of your growth balance out in places like De Soto County and West Memphis. Coming from the Arkansas side, you don't even realize you're close to Memphis till you're practically on the bridge... For Memphis to be such a large core/city proper, it seems like its metro pop is rather small.

Salt Lake City is in possibly the most beautiful location in the world for a major city. Also the city is in a empty space where few large cities are found in the US(from Eastern WA,OR,and CA to MN and East CO). I would love if it could grow to have an impressive skyline as well. St. Louis has only built 2 modest sized skyscrapers in the past decade, i would love to see more growth there to compliment the Arch. I always want Chicago to continue making world beating skyscrapers but I fear that era may be ending. The two thousand footers that have been proposed in Chicago are taking forever to be confirmed and funded. Lastly I'd love to see Albuquerque take off for many of the same reasons for SLC.

Salt Lake City is in possibly the most beautiful location in the world for a major city. Also the city is in a empty space where few large cities are found in the US(from Eastern WA,OR,and CA to MN and East CO). I would love if it could grow to have an impressive skyline as well. St. Louis has only built 2 modest sized skyscrapers in the past decade, i would love to see more growth there to compliment the Arch. I always want Chicago to continue making world beating skyscrapers but I fear that era may be ending. The two thousand footers that have been proposed in Chicago are taking forever to be confirmed and funded. Lastly I'd love to see Albuquerque take off for many of the same reasons for SLC.

Chicago is in an interesting situation, it has shrunk significantly since 1950 (like Detroit) but much less catastrophically, the Metro continues to grow moderately but the city itself is stagnant in the years its not shrinking.

Luckily that means Chicago can still have lots of downtown growth for business even as its population declines. Although It looks like it will continue to grow fairly slowly (as it looses a lot of people to the west and South) it will continue to slip in ranking to other faster growing areas like Houston and DC.

Really if you want a good measure of how "big" a city really is you need to look at the Metro areas.

San Francisco isn't a big city population wise, but its the center of a major metropolitan area of like 8 million people (if you include San Jose)

Phoenix is the 6th largest city in the country with 1.5 million (nearly double San Francisco) , but in a metro of only 4.4 million so in "real terms" its like 12 or 13 in importance.

As for my own choice; as an AZ native I would like to see one of our northern cities grow preferably

Flagstaff:

Great Scenery with awesome summers, can be very snowy in the winter. On the I 40 close to Vegas, Phoenix, LA, ABQ and Salt Lake. Its in a national forest though which I think makes it harder to grow.

Or Prescott:

Gorgeous little town, not quite as foesty as Flag but the surrounding hills are forested. The weather is much milder than Phoenix, Tucson or Flagstaff with cooler summers than the desert but warmer winters than the Mountains.

Prescott is actually growing rapidly and has a lot more room to grow than Flag. Historically it was the territory seat for some time. It never made sense to me that Flagstaff or Prescott didn't grow like Phoenix and Tucson is but it makes more sense when you realize that the major river watersheds in the state are in the deserts, which is why they are the center for agriculture and then eventually population.

Despite the hot weather its actually more suitable for large because of the water access.

It has a great downtown core, a large university, great districts, a downtown baseball stadium for the Rubber Ducks, and terrific architecture in it's surrounding neighborhoods. Lots of culture and diversity too.

I'm a Canadian as well and from what few American cities I've been to, I liked a small bunch.

I'd be happy to see:
• Portland (Maine)
• Cincinnati
• Buffalo*
• Indianapolis
• Burlington (Vermont)
• Fargo
• Bismark
• Duluth
grow healthily as in not sprawling outwards or super intensification but just get bigger, I found them nice cities for the most part and I think they'd make great regional centres (If they aren't already)
* Buffalo used to be a major and very important city during the early 20th Century/Late 19th century. (I think)